


volume changes—it doesn’t matter as long as it’s you

by OceanMyth



Series: Ocean's ATLA Drabbles, Oneshots, and Ficlets [36]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, F/M, Ficlet, Sad, mai is a quiet child, somehow they still work, zuko is a loud child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:53:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29524614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanMyth/pseuds/OceanMyth
Summary: As a child, Mai never liked it when it got too loud-- but there’s something different about it when it’s Zuko.
Relationships: Mai/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Ocean's ATLA Drabbles, Oneshots, and Ficlets [36]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2113209
Comments: 5
Kudos: 47





	volume changes—it doesn’t matter as long as it’s you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [annavale23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annavale23/gifts).



As a child, Mai never liked it when it got too loud.

Maybe it’s because whenever the volume rose, it’d close over her head and she’d drown in a swirl of voices that would never give her room to breath. Like when she’d find herself on the fringes of her family’s parties, or stone faced and silent as her mother-or-father drug her past a hundred faces each reaching down to touch her face, pat her head, and exclaim over how she’d grown.

But there’s something different about it when it’s Zuko. He gets loud easily— the first few times she sees him and Azula together prove that a thousandfold— but it’s the most gentle loudness she’s ever experienced. 

If the parties with her parents are an endless uncaring rapid, tumbling her over and over again without pause, then Zuko is a whirlwind, a way to test herself against the pressure and blustery force without the same danger. She can always breath when she’s with him, since all it takes is a single word from her to stop him dead in his tracks.

Maybe that’s because no matter how loud he gets, he’s always listening for her. 

And when it’s just the two of them, sitting underneath one of the big trees in either the Royal garden, or the smaller one Mai has at her house, Mai learns that Zuko can be quiet too. It’s not a quietness like the kind that settles around her when she’s alone— it’s much warmer than that— but a rich one. 

Somehow a silence is more beautiful when it’s fragile, when it feels like it could be broken at any moment. Something delicate and rare to be appreciated, rather than a constant. Once, the silence emboldened her enough to rest her head on Zuko’s shoulder— the cherry trees were in bloom and she’s spent hours blushing over the way he’d looked at her as he’d helped her pull the annoying petals from her hair. She'll probably spend hours more, since it seems like that's the only look she’ll ever get from him.

Mai finds the world too quiet now, as the emptiness settles in. A sardonic and snide part of her finds it funny that she can split her life so cleanly in two, the Now and the Before, one so much happier than the other, and that she only counts time in absence. After all, hadn’t she always promised herself to remain unattached and distant?

Looks like she couldn’t even do that much in the end.

Ty Lee comes up to her, a month after Zuko’s banishment, and confides that she’s worried about the state of Mai’s aura. According to her it’s become dingy and tarnished from the shining silver steel it should be.

Mai doesn’t say that she wishes that it was black. That black might be a more appropriate color— there’s been no news about Zuko since the day his ship left port and she doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive— and does it matter because in the end he might as well be dead.

She does tell Ty Lee that she doesn’t believe in auras. It’s not precisely the truth, but a lie is much easier on her tongue than the sharp edges of the broken truth. Ty Lee gives her a look like she knows Mai is lying, but she doesn’t say anything as Azula comes back into the room.

They don’t talk about the ways that Mai has changed since Zuko left after that. 

Mai sighs, breaking the long silence of her room, and looks out the window towards where the endless horizon of the sea would be. She wonders where the small and bitter girl who loved silence went— she could really use her help now.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed the fic! it was Not supposed to get this melancholy, my bad!
> 
> tell me what you thought in the comments, or on tumblr @justoceanmyth.


End file.
